Learning to Deal With Quiet Times

When you're self employed quiet times can be... interesting. That's putting it politely, they can actually be pretty terrifying and leave you in a cold sweat and in my case staring at my phone in desperation for that kerching noise to let me know someone has made an order through my Etsy shop.

I'm normally a wreck and this year has been going so much better than previous years when it comes to orders and revenue that I've known that a lull was on its way and for once I was determined to not let it turn me in to a quivering wreck.

So this time when my shop went quiet I decided to not let it hurt me. I don't really like being ruled by my phone and I know the watched pot never boils!
This week was the beginning of a quiet period for me, I do have a commission on the go but other orders have slowed right down so I've thrown myself in to the commission and getting in to a few projects that have been put on hold lately.

I've also got my green fingers out and have been doing a lot of gardening! I was desperate for some plants again so I now have a glorious amount of green outside my front door! Working with my hands in the fresh air and sun has done so much good for me and I found myself leaving my phone inside whilst I was busy, only checking it periodically and oh gosh! It was brilliant!
I never realise when I'm getting obsessed with my phone and social media so this has been so refreshing and has cleared my head so much.

But of course that doesn't mean I haven't been working! There are new products up in the shop right now and I'm currently working on some covers for some larger notebooks and working on my Astrid the star rat zine that I'm hoping will be going live very soon!

Along with the zine I'm also going to be offering prints of some of the artwork used in the zine, these will also have some beautiful gold details on the stars to add an extra something.

Of course, work is quiet with orders but I'm still working insane amounts so in reality my "quiet" time has actually been quite productive unlike previous times where I'm just sitting around waiting for orders whilst stressing myself silly.
Of course I do get tense at these moments and life has been a bit crazy this week but this side of things has been nice. I've been doing things for myself and not focussing so much on the world around me.

I highly recommend getting away from your screens if you're going through a quiet patch. The thing is things will pick back up but if you spend the time waiting and being stressed you miss out on a nice little break to work on lots of things you've been meaning to work on and some nice short work days where you can enjoy breathing!